TV Confidential with Ed Robertson

TVC 718.4: Ed welcomes back Stefanie Powers , the actress known around the world as Jennifer Hart on Hart to Hart (ABC, 1979-1984), and the founder and president of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation , the nonprofit organization that Stefanie established in 1982 in memory of her longtime life partner that continues and furthers the conservation work of William Holden in East Africa. Stefanie w...

TVC 718.5: Stefanie Powers talks to Ed about why her experience as a contract player at Columbia Pictures at the start of her career was like "a finishing school for actors"; working with Ava Gardner on Maggie (CBS, 1986), a pilot for a series that marked Gardner's final screen appearance (the pilot, however, never aired); and why James Garner ranks alongside Robert Wagner as among Stefanie's favo...

TVC 718.6:  Mark Shaw , author of Abuse of Power: Connecting Robert Kennedy's Assassinaton with the Murders of JFK and Dorothy Kilgallen and The Reporter Who Knew Too Much , talks to Ed about how the City of New York honored Dorothy Kilgallen on Saturday, Nov. 8 by naming a street after her on the sixtieth anniversary of her death. Other topics this segment include why so many of us are enamored w...

TVC 717.1: Ed welcomes back Mark Shaw , investigative journalist, former criminal defense attorney, onetime legal analyst for CNN, ESPN, and USA Today, and the author of nearly thirty books, including  The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of What's My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen . Mark's latest book, Abuse of Power , includes new information about the mysterious n...

TVC 717.2: Mark Shaw , author of Abuse of Power: Connecting Robert Kennedy's Assassinaton with the Murders of JFK and Dorothy Kilgallen , talks to Ed about a recently released YouTube video about John Shear (pictured above, left), a longtime paddock captain at Santa Anita Racetrack in Southern California who hired Sirhan Sirhan (pictured above, center) as a "hot walker" several months before Sirha...

TVC 717.3: From December 2011: Tony, Donna, and Ed send birthday wishes to film and television legend Dick Van Dyke ( The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Poppins, Diagnosis Murder ) as part of This Week in TV History. Dick Van Dyke turns 100 on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025.

TVC 717.4: Ed welcomes back Ellen Geer , daughter of Will Geer and the artistic director of Theatricum Botanicum , the outdoor amphitheatre in Topanga Canyon, California that Will Geer founded in 1973. Theatricum's fifth annual Holiday Family Faire will take place on Saturday, Dec. 13 from 11am to 5pm, followed by a special live production of It's a Wonderful Life featuring Beau Bridges, Wendie Ma...

TVC 717.5: Ed welcomes back actress and author Alison Arngrim ( Little House on the Prairie , Confessions of a Prairie Bitch ). Alison has news about several events coming up over the next few weeks that will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of Little House on the Prairie (NBC, 1974-1983), including the recent Live Before a Studio Audience edition of The Little House 50 th Annive...

TVC 716.5: From February 2014: Prolific television director Ralph Senensky takes listeners behind the scenes of "Grandma Comes Home," the episode of The Waltons from March 1978 that marked Ellen Geer's return to the series after she had suffered a stroke the year before. Other topics this segment include how Corby and Will Geer were "the salt and pepper of The Waltons ," plus Ralph shares a few me...

TVC 716.6: From February 2014: Prolific television director Ralph Senensky talks to Ed about directing Shirley Jones, Ray Bolger, and Rosemary DeCamp in the "Forty-Year Itch" episode of The Partridge Family (ABC, 1970-1974), as well as how he first worked with actress Jennifer Raine at the Pasadena Playhouse. Raine is the mother of Brian Forster, the second actor who played Chris Partridge on The...

TVC 715.1: Ed welcomes back author, essayist, novelist, and TV historian Mitchell Hadley ( The Electronic Mirror , ItsAboutTV.com ). Mitchell's latest book, Darkness in Primetime: How Classic-Era TV Foresaw Modern Society's Descent into Hell , is a series of essays that shows how certain episodes of such classic series as The Twilight Zone , The Outer Limits , Star Trek , and The Prisoner , as wel...

TVC 715.2: Mitchell Hadley, author of The Electronic Mirror and Darkness in Primetime , talks to Ed about how "The General," Episode 6 of The Prisoner (ITC, 1967-1968), the classic allegorical series created by Patrick McGoohan, discusses the dangers of rapidly accumulating a vast amount of knowledge—without any understanding of what that knowledge really means. Also in this segment: Mitchell disc...

TVC 715.3: Ed welcomes Arnie Holland, president and CEO of Lightyear Entertainment , and executive producer of Heaven , the acclaimed feature-length documentary from 1987 that also marked the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton. Recently re-released and digitally remastered, Heaven is a free-wheeling, offbeat pastiche of original interviews by Keaton that, combined with...

TVC 715.4: Part 2 of a conversation that began last week with Les Lannom , the actor known around the world as Lester Hodges on Harry O (ABC, 1974-1976). Topics this segment include a few behind-the-scenes anecdotes about filming "Mister Five and Dime," Les' favorite episode of Harry O , including a funny story about an ad-lib in a scene near the end of the episode that originated with Les, but wh...

TVC 714.5: Actor and musician Les Lannom talks to Ed about learning how to play the bagpipes when he was age forty; why one needs strong stomach muscles and a strong neck to play the bagpipes; the upcoming audiobook project about explorers Lincoln Ellsworth and Raold Amundsen in which Les will provide the voices; and the events leading up to Les' guest appearance on Kung Fu in December 1972—a role...

TVC 714.6: Actor and musician Les Lannom shares a few memories about working with Peter Falk in Columbo Goes to College (ABC, 1990), with James Garner in the miniseries Space (CBS, 1985), with Henry Fonda in the acclaimed made-for-TV movie Gideon's Trumpet (CBS, 1980), and with Dennis Weaver in the epic miniseries Centennial (NBC, 1978-1979).

TVC 714.1: TV Confidential remembers Ralph Senensky , longtime member of the Directors Guild of America and one of the most prolific directors in TV history (particularly when it comes to episodic television) with an encore presentation of a conversation that originally aired in February 2014. Ralph Senensky passed away on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025 at the age of 102. Topics this segment include a loo...

TVC 714.2: From February 2014: Prolific television director Ralph Senensky talks to Ed about working with Ralph Waite, Will Geer, Ellen Corby, and Michael Learned on The Waltons , and with Richard Thomas on "Game of Terror," an episode of The FBI that aired in 1971, one year before the premiere of The Waltons . Ralph not only helmed twelve episodes of The Waltons , many of which rank among the ver...

TVC 714.3: Ed welcomes Les Lannom , the actor known around the world as Lester Hodges on Harry O (ABC, 1974-1976), and a man who has worked with such movie and TV legends as Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Joe Don Baker, Sissy Spacek, Dennis Weaver, Pat Hingle, James Garner, David Carradine, and David Janssen in the course of his career. Topics this segment include the appea...

TVC 714.4: Part 2 of a conversation that began last week with Louise Sorel ( Days of Our Lives, Santa Barbara ). Louise's new book, If There Were No Dogs: Musings and Mutterings , is a collection of prose pieces and poems drawn from her life, childhood, and career that reveals how Louise navigated a sometimes difficult childhood with emotionally distant parents by discovering the theatre at a youn...

TVC 714.5: Les Lannom talks to Ed about how his penchant for performing cold readings stems from his longtime passion for reading out loud; how his youthful appearances has sometimes worked in his favor (and sometimes not); and how a guest appearance on Kung Fu in 1972 not only put him on the radar of producers Jerry Thorpe, Alex Beaton, and Robert Dozier, but paved the way for his being cast in S...

TVC 714.5: Les Lannom talks to Ed about how he and David Janssen bonded almost immediately when they worked together on Harry O , partly because they shared an ability to laugh at themselves and not take themselves too seriously. Les not only wrote the foreword for The Harry O Viewing Companion by Steve Aldous and Gary Gillies, but contributed many behind-the-scenes anecdotes about production of t...

TVC 713.1: TV Confidential remembers June Lockhart ( Lassie, Petticoat Junction, Lost in Space ) with an encore presentation of our conversation from June 2014 with the beloved actress. June Lockhart passed away on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025 at the age of 100. At the time we spoke to June in June 2014, she had just been honored by NASA with its Exceptional Public Achievement Medal for inspiring the p...

TVC 713.2: From June 2014: June Lockhart talks to Ed about some of the many TV game shows on which she appeared throughout her career, including Who Said That? (NBC, 1948-1955), a show that also began June's long association with the White House press corps, and Take My Word For It (Synd., 1982-1983), a show hosted by Jim Lange that was filmed at the studios of KGO-TV in San Francisco. June Lockha...

TVC 713.2a: From November 2015: Tony, Donna, and Ed remember the premiere of F Troop (ABC, 1965-1967) in September 1965. Topics this segment include how the influence of Buster Keaton can be seen in many of the pratfalls that Ken Berry performed when he played Captain Parmenter on F Troop ; the on-screen chemistry between Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, and how they recaptured that ten years late...